


Sometimes You’ll Have to Cut Through

by vargrimar



Series: The Chambers and the Valves [20]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Canon Compliant, Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Falling In Love, Introspection, Life Or Death Scenario, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 04, Self-Sacrifice, sherlock holmes chooses between blood and heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22981228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vargrimar/pseuds/vargrimar
Summary: His own heart hammers. It hammers and hammers and hammers, deafening and thunderous in its fear.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: The Chambers and the Valves [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640680
Kudos: 52





	Sometimes You’ll Have to Cut Through

**Author's Note:**

> ( your heart is the only place that I call home;  
> I cannot be returned )

Mycroft knows.

That should alarm him, he thinks. The fact that his brother somehow knows the sheer intensity of his emotional tether to John Watson should be an uncomfortable and forbidding thought. It should terrify him because it means he’s been more obvious than he’d intended, that he hasn’t kept all this under the careful control he has so painstakingly employed.

And Mycroft is clever. Cleverer than most. Clearly not clever enough to stop Eurus and her twisted experimentation on the human psyche featuring the Holmes sibling lab rats, but still cleverer than most, and that must have let him see, must have clued him in. Sherlock must believe in that because the alternative—his own bloody transparency—is an option far worse.

So, Mycroft knows. That is why he is goading Sherlock with these cutting barbs. That is why he is disparaging everything John Watson with unrivalled hauteur. That is why. Mycroft knows. Mycroft _knows_. And that should be a horrible, fearsome thing.

But it isn’t.

At any other time, in any other place, it might have been a revelation Sherlock would have denied with uncharacteristic vehemence (he is my closest friend; that’s it, that’s all there is, that’s everything; what more do you want me to say?), but at this very moment with the three of them trapped deep within the labyrinthine depths of Sherrinford prison and with no choice but to participate in his sister’s sadistic experiments, it feels a lot like comfort. Like solace. Like relief.

The wavelength is there, shared across a room-length chasm, however brief: _I’m glad you’re on my side._

There is no need to explain because Mycroft already knows. And not only does Mycroft already know, he _understands_ , and he’s trying to be kind. He understands that being forced to choose between blood and heart is a cruel, impossible choice. He understands there is more at play here than the surface shows. He understands that this is more than putting the life of a brother and the life of a friend on a set of balancing scales to weigh and measure them for their strengths, their merits. He understands that this is more than the one found wanting being doomed to have a bullet buried in his chest by Sherlock’s own hand.

It is more than that.

It is more, and Mycroft understands.

And that, Sherlock thinks, is what makes this so damned difficult. Mycroft may be insufferable and he may be a bastard and he may stick his nose where it doesn’t belong, but he is still Sherlock’s brother. In spite of everything, there is still a bond. Really, how could there not? They grew up together. They shared hardships and memories. They helped one another when it was most needed. They forged their own worlds, carved out their own lives, gave themselves purpose. The Christmas dinners might have been rubbish, but they never warranted bloodshed.

The weight of the gun in Sherlock’s right hand is solid and heavy as he levels it at Mycroft. Warmth suffuses the metal and perspiration dampens the grip. All of it is a stark reminder of the choice that looms ahead—the choice he has yet to make, the decision to which he cannot bring himself to commit.

“Not in the face, though, please,” says Mycroft, his voice enshrouded in a terrible calm. “I promised my brain to the Royal Society.”

Sherlock gives a conceding nod. “Where would you suggest?”

“Well,” says Mycroft, hands climbing up to his collar, his tie, smoothing and straightening, an adjustment most prim, and Sherlock can’t help but smile, “I suppose there is a heart somewhere inside me. I don’t imagine it’s much of a target, but… why don’t we try for that?”

Mum and Dad will be devastated, he thinks. A resurrected daughter at the cost of a murdered son.

Will they forgive him for Mycroft’s death? Or will they blame Eurus for pitting their children against one another, for requiring that one person in this room must die? Will they care at all that John is too horribly willing to perish in Mycroft’s stead? Will they care that Sherlock cannot physically make himself murder John, that the thought of murdering Mycroft is somehow more plausible than utter implausibility of murdering either of them?

(That word plays in his head, over and over, a skipping record, a scratched disk: murder, murder, _murder_. He has already murdered Charles Magnussen and now he is about to murder Mycroft Holmes. What next? Who else will follow? Doctor John Watson always follows; the proof is here, now, in the tense of a jaw and the clench of a fist. If he chooses this path, makes this irrevocable decision, will John still die in this hellish place?)

And what of Mum and Dad? he wonders. Will Eurus come after them next? After she’s finished, after Mycroft is dead and her game has been played to full, will she inflict this vicious vivisection upon them both as well? Or will she do something else to occupy her time? Will she choose to dismantle entire governments from this useless island prison? Will that satisfy her need to dissect the human condition? Will that be enough? Will anything?

And then Mycroft says, “Moriarty.”

 _Moriarty_ , the name that injected itself into Sherlock’s life for the better part of five years, the name that promised to set the husk of his heart acinder, the name that slung its way round his neck even in the wake of its bearer’s demise and dragged him to Death’s daring precipice more times than he would care to count.

Mycroft says “Moriarty” and “five minutes” and “unsupervised” in the gravest of tones, and everything is upended in a throttling rush. Something in Sherlock stutters, thought processes jamming to a sharp and unceremonious halt, and then it all makes sense, all of it, everything.

Unsupervised. Moriarty had been in Eurus’s cell, alone, unsupervised. And the result is not just this one particular harrowing moment, these few compressed and nightmarish seconds where Sherlock holds a gun in his hand and aims it at his own flesh and blood, but countless events of varying lethality stretched over the course of the past several years.

It began right here, he thinks. Everything. It all started right here, right in Sherrinford prison. And right here is where it all will end.

How poetic.

“Goodbye, brother mine.” Resignation haunts Mycroft’s voice; acquiescence to the decision ahead. “No flowers.” A tight smile. Laced hands. “By request.”

As the overhead lights snap crimson and the pre-recorded footage of Jim Moriarty’s spectre thrums its predictions throughout the concrete room, Sherlock’s focus narrows on Mycroft. It narrows on his posh three-piece suit, the svelte stripes of his tie, the front curl of his thinning hair, the deep set of his brow that gives way to a second-long flicker of fear. It narrows on Mycroft because he won’t (can’t) let it narrow on John.

And that’s a rather pointless restriction, really, now that it crosses his mind, because Eurus already knows. It is sort of obvious, isn’t it? Eurus already knows just like Mycroft already knows; this forced and insuperable choice is less of that knowledge’s statement and more of a continuous undertow that courses through the situation’s every little detail: Sherlock Holmes cares, Sherlock Holmes has a heart, Sherlock Holmes is _weak_.

“Five minutes,” he says, throat gone terribly tight. “It took her just five minutes to do all of this to us.”

At last, Sherlock spares John a brief glance. He stands there in expectant silence, but the returning gaze is wary, questioning, the blue of his eyes murky and dark. His head gives an inquisitive tilt, and Sherlock reads it, recognises it, knows it well, knows it from years of interpreting and memorising John’s body language: _What are you planning?_

Someone in this room must die, he thinks, working his jaw. If I don’t make this choice, Eurus will punish us with something worse.

Sherlock looks back to Mycroft—Mycroft and his defeated acceptance, Mycroft and his quiet fear—and it’s unsettling, he thinks, seeing such supplication on his brother’s face. It doesn’t belong there. Mycroft should never look this way, never; his rubbish big brother should have an air of arrogance or disdain, not of subdued horror.

Then again, facing one’s mortality is rarely done with proper aplomb.

“Well, not on my watch,” he says, and lowers the gun.

“What are you doing?” Eurus’s voice, tinny over the speakers, yields a note of uncertainty.

“A moment ago,” he says, “a brave man asked to be remembered.”

Sherlock stares beyond John, beyond Mycroft, and focusses on the cool slate of the wall. The air is stagnant and warm. Adrenaline pools in the pit of his stomach, a bilious, roiling, corrosive whorl.

The pale edge of Saint Bart’s superimposes over the empty corridors of his mind palace. Wood panelling bleeds to concrete, and for the shortest of moments, the fleeting echo of flight buries deeply into the hearts of his palms.

His own heart hammers. It hammers and hammers and hammers, deafening and thunderous in its fear.

“I’m remembering the governor,” he says.

Sherlock brings the gun to the soft, vulnerable underside of his chin. The metal has a residual warmth: ignited gunpowder and body heat. The weight of it is an anchor between his palms, a heaviness that could send him plummeting through the floor, the earth, the ocean, luring him down, down, down past hydrothermal vents and magma rifts until magnesium and iron silicate rise up to envelop him whole.

This is my Samarra, he thinks. This is where the road ends.

And this time, he’s ready.

Slowly, Sherlock begins to count.


End file.
